I've received some feedback on my project and I'm happy to provide answers for the whole community.
- Poor quality of photos/texts/materials on the website.We're on beta version, it is clearly indicated on the website. While all necessary features present, some glitches are still possible.
Do us a favor, let us know what we can improve, we'll be happy to get better. Bear with us, the launch day was yesterday!
- How do I know this isn't just a complicated or elaborate Ponzi scheme?Easy - nobody holds any money. Let me explain how we work.
A start-up needs money to develop its product, they need $1500 for incorporation, $10,000 for website and $15,000 to hire cool sales team. They're generous enough to give 5% for this money, $1,500+$10,000+$15,000=$26,500. We start fundraising at
https://www.TipTopFund.com by selling shares, say, at 0.05 btc per share. Thus, to pass the 1st stage and incorporate the company we need to sell 30 shares.
An investor buys 1 share and pays
0.05 etc to a multisig escrow account maintained by
http://www.EscrowMyBits.com.
Not TipTopFund, nor the start-up touch any money. If we don't sell 30 shares within a certain time period the stage has not completed and
everyone takes their money back from the escrow. Well, minus 1%, this is what EscrowMyBits earns. If we do sell 30 shares the escrow releases the funds and the start-up initiates incorporation.
The money is released either directly to a company that provides legal service or, if they don't accept bitcoin, we sell bitcoin and pay that company. Incorporation process is transparent as everyone may check status of the company online. TipTopFund acts as a trustee for all investors, it joins the board as a co founder and for $1500 we get 0.28% in the that company. Stage 1 completed.
Stage 2 begins, now we raise $10,000. This time we have web developers who agree to do the job and take bitcoin as a payment. So when we successfully sell the next portion of shares to collect that amount the money goes directly to the web developers. Nobody else touches the money! And TipTopFund with investors increase their share in the business on 1.8% and now we own 2.08%.
As the second stage is done we have a company and a website and now the business has more
value than it had in the beginning. We may want to raise the price of its shares and now to get aboard new investors will pay
0.07 btc, not 0.05 btc. But again, we collect the money on the multisig escrow account maintained by EscrowMyBits.com and once collected it will be released directly to the developer/provider. In our case we will put that money on the bank account of the company and will pay the salary to the cool sales guys who will generate us revenue. We will control the bank account and all investors will see statements regularly. Once we start make sales the value of our business increases again which will reflect in the price of of shares we own.
And so on.
Thus, the money is always under control: in the beginning it is collected on a multisig escrow account, and once collected it gets released to a developer/provider who delivers services bringing value to our business.